


Birds of a Feather

by Anxiety_Pickle



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Naruto
Genre: Gen, I was in a mood, Sort Of, The uchiha are night furies, this is literally just a HTTYD/naruto crossover, this was a joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27391291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anxiety_Pickle/pseuds/Anxiety_Pickle
Summary: Naruto Uzumaki is born early into the hottest Konoha summer on record underneath the dark wrath of warmongering storm clouds, during the year of the bountiful harvest, under all the right circumstances.Looking down the maw of what might be the world's last Night Fury, he would laugh if he wasn't so terrified.Luckyis right.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Umino Iruka & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 9
Kudos: 57





	Birds of a Feather

**Author's Note:**

> @Confusioncucumber this is your fault

Naruto Uzumaki is born early into the hottest Konoha summer on record underneath the dark wrath of warmongering storm clouds, during the year of bountiful harvest, and given the epithet of luck. He _should_ be lucky, anyways, because he was born under all the right circumstances - except for the decidedly unfortunate dragon attack just hours after his birth. 

_Lucky_ is right.

Most people, such as the Councilmen folded across from him, have seen fit to discard the title, all things considered. Dragon attacks aren’t at all unheard of. On the contrary, they just had one last week. An armorwing came in off the coast yesterday and turned Kiba’s flock of sheep into barbeque, and he’d bitched about it all day. Like _he_ had room to talk, Ino had had her thatch roof burned off _again,_ bringing that number up to a grand total of _three._

Yes, Naruto Uzumaki is not a particularly lucky person. He’d even go as far to say he quite _unfortunate,_ actually. 

He sips awkwardly from his cup as the discussion unfolds around him. Kakashi shoots him a wary side-eye when he starts fiddling with the edge of his dress clothes. He feels like a painted up doll waiting to be judged by the woodcarver.

“Your admittance into the course starts next week.” Danzo informs him. Even though Hiruzen is technically the village leader, Danzo is the Councilman that typically handles the social affairs, which is ironic, considering Danzo is the least charismatic person he’s ever met. “I hope I don’t have to remind you to mind your behavior.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes. If Kakashi were a dragon, he’d definitely try to set him on fire. He might be currently trying to set him on fire. Naruto doesn’t know much about the Hatake; maybe they are actually silver wolves in human skin, Kakashi looks murderous enough for it. “I know. I have a reputation.”

Well, he _specifically_ didn’t have a good reputation, unless being laughably bad at playground games and academically incompetent counted as a _reputation,_ but he did, for better or worse, descend from a long line of Jinchuuriki, and that title was only ever awarded to those who had protected the village against the dragons. His mother had been one, before her untimely death. Her warpaint and fox mask are famous here, as foreign as they probably seemed to Konoha. She’d fought tooth and nail for her title, and her name was rightfully included in the stone of honor after she’d lost her life in the Night Fury attack seventeen years ago.

Unfortunately, really.

“You represent our village. Remember that going forward.”

Dragon training. Something Naruto’s been anticipating for years.

When he was young it had seemed appealing. The gold-trimmed lace of glory, high on the champagne bubbles of power fantasies and the velvety promise of acceptance. Dragon killing was something _expected_ of him, even. There was supposed to be some monster inside him, hungry for revenge, justice for his parent’s death, if it could be called that. 

Naruto wants a lot of things, don’t get him wrong. He wants to visit Uzushio someday, like he wants to kick Kiba’s ass in a hand to hand fight and impress Sakura, who does want to be a dragon hunter, like he looks forward to his regular harassment of all his schoolteachers.

But he’s going to do it anyways. He _does_ want to join his mother in rank, after all. Maybe then everyone will stop looking at him like a poor, wingless bird. 

Kakashi, the one responsible for the program in the first place, smiles beneath his mask and grabs him by the back of his collar.

“Don’t worry, Councilman. He’ll stay in line.”

Naruto fidgets and pouts, and resigns himself to his misery.

Danzo turns to address Kakashi. “See to it that he does.”

They take that for the dismissal it is, and Kakashi hauls him out of the room.

Naruto would consider himself in possession of a few casual acquaintances, but he doesn’t really _have_ friends.

And wow, isn’t _that_ depressing.

Regardless, upon pouring into the training center, furbished with old furniture, held up by old architecture, Nauto knows that he’s definitely on his own. The groups have already settled, and he’s an outsider to most of them. Choji was nice enough not to kick him out if he were to wander over there, but Sakura and Ino were… less than friends. It was probably that time he dumped a bucket of white paint on them, if he were being honest. In his defense, it was meant for someone else.

Kakashi steps up to take his place by the podium. When standing tall, it’s easy to forget that at his core the man is nothing but procrastination and porn addiction all tied together with a neat bow of depression.

(Kakashi is, technically, the closest thing Naruto has to family, and he… isn’t sure what to feel about that).

The fur cloak thrown over his shoulders accentuates his figure, makes him look bigger, more bristling, than he really is. There’s also the intimidating scar slashed over the eye he usually keeps hidden. He drags his disinterested eyes over the crowd, before finally landing on him. The entire population of rowdy seventeen year olds quiets immediately under the newest figure of authority.

“Welcome to day one of your training.” He greets them, entirely bored. “I hope you’ve said the proper goodbyes to your families, because some of you are not likely to make it out of here alive.”

“...what?” Ino says. Kakashi plows ahead.

“Anyways, if you’ll follow me into the pit, I’ll be glad to demonstrate your first lesson.”

“The _pit?”_ Someone else repeats, significantly more worried, maybe Sakura. “What’s the pit?”

Shikamaru shrugs. “I guess we’re gonna find out.”

The pit is exactly as horrifying as it sounded like it was going to be. An arena filled with sand, open to rows of spectators, rigged with twelve caste-iron gates which he could only assume were meant to be lifted to unleash whatever monstrosity lived inside into the public. 

Not only that, but they apparently _kept dragons captive here_ , which was news to him. 

There were live dragons in there, and Naruto would be more willing to fight one if not for the fact that they’d probably all die. Jinchuuriki-genes or not, a lack of basic training would definitely spell out his death. It doesn’t stop him from peering up into the gate as it rumbles open, and Kakashi readies the long steel sword, encrusted with the glittering ruby scales of the monstrous singetail he’d felled at the delicate age of fifteen. 

A Stormcutter drags itself out from under the gate. Naruto inhales sharply. The stories don’t do it justice, those things are _huge._ Owl-like in mannerisms; it tilts its head curiously and narrows bright yellow eyes as it glares at them. The iridescent frills around its neck flare up, and it lunges. 

A few people behind him scream. 

Before it can get too far, the shackles around its ankles keep it in place. It hisses at them from afar, curling long, dark talons into the sand. 

Kakashi points his sword. “As you can see, the dragons can’t get very far. Consider them leashed. For training purposes, they’ll stay that way. Now.” He sheaths the weapon again, and motions for the dragon to be led back to its cell. “You’re going to show me what you can do.”

Naruto is not the best dragon-fighter in the class, unfortunately.

It’s a little embarrassing.

While Kakashi unleashes a horde of smaller, non-threatening looking dragons into the arena (relatively non-threatening, that little yellow one just tried to stick his entire arm down its throat), the rest of them have to do their best to subdue them. It’s… not going well. 

While Sakura and Ino bat at them with wooden practice weapons, Shikamaru stands by the sidelines and watches the chaos unfold. Kiba declined any weapons at all, Hinata has a meager-looking driftwood shield that’s probably going to fall apart at any time now, even though the dragon she’s fighting is the same size as a chicken.

Naruto looks for the smallest one he can possibly fight, and finds it in a bright green little monster. It bares needle-sharp teeth at him and he scowls back.

“I can beat that.” He says.

Sakura whirls over her shoulder, sweat beading her temple. “Naruto, don’t-” 

Too late.

The dragon unhinges its jaw and breathes corrosive poison into the air, because of course it does.

Sakura screams. Kakashi comes down to intervene. The entire student body is evacuated.

“That was pathetic.” Kakashi tells them, as they sulk in the dining room and most of them glare at him when they think he isn’t looking.

This is just _great._

“How could you be so stupid?” Sakura hisses. “That was so obviously a subspecies of a Green Death - you can’t just walk up to those things! You cost us the entire beginning match! Not all of us have famous parents, Naruto.”

“How was I supposed to know?” He holds up his hands in surrender. She curls her lip up. “Maybe if you actually paid attention. You can’t just march up to the field like that and expect to win!”

"Well not all of us can be _nerds_."

Sakura squawks indignantly. 

He regrets this decision already.

“Did you see that necklace he was wearing?” Ino asks, passing the tray of food around the table. No one is exactly happy about this, especially considering he nearly got his team killed earlier during their exercise, so now Sakura thinks he must be purposefully trying to sabotage them, for whatever reason. “You think it’s a Night Fury scale?”

Choji leans across the table. “Legend is, he got that scar fighting a Night Fury, and he took one of its scales in exchange for its eye.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Sakura scoffs. “Night Furies have been extinct for years.”

“Kakashi’s old enough.” Shikamaru shrugs. “If anyone’s killed one, it’s him.”

No one had seen a Night Fury in ten years. Word has it that their population began declining after the attack on the village, after the biggest Night Wing anyone had ever seen had ambushed the village on his birthday and razed their village to the ground. They called it _Madara, god of the nightly storms._

That’s what Night Furies were, the harbingers of storms, creatures that carried lightning behind their teeth. 

“You grew up around him, didn’t you?” Shikamaru asks. 

Naruto winces. “Yeah. He didn’t tell me if it was or wasn’t.”

Kakashi didn’t talk about his past at all, which leads him to think there’s something strange about it. He should be bragging about all his accomplishments, especially the Night Fury, if that one was even true, not pretending it didn’t happen.

“Oh.” Ino says, the edge of her smile pinched. “I thought you were closer. Sorry.”

She doesn’t look so much _mean_ as she does _awkward._ Naruto had taken a lot of her boisterous attitude as dislike when they were younger, and it had really driven a wedge between them.

“It’s fine.”

“Night Fury scales are supposed to be as hard as diamond.” Sakura continues, boasting her encyclopedic knowledge. Shikamaru was the only one who could ever rival her on that front, and he was much too lazy to ever attempt to utilize any of his wit. “How would he have gotten one off? And why just one? We don’t even know how Furies work, there are so few of them- thirty recorded cases! In a hundred years!”

“So how do you know they’re extinct?”

Sakura sighs. “Really Naruto, you need to start paying attention. You of all people should know.”

Blood rushes to his face. There’s no concrete way of knowing whether or not the Furies were all dead, but it could be pretty honestly assumed. Not one spotted in years, the changes in the ecosystem, the fact that a few of them had been part of the attack. Fury bodies went up in flames upon their death, leaving behind nothing but ash. It was difficult to tell when one had died.

“So what is it, then?”

“I don’t know.” Sakura grumbles. “Why don’t you ask him?’

None of them would get a straight answer out of that.

“Yeah.” Ino winces, and turns back to her food.

Somehow, he feels even more isolated sitting next to them.

It happens in the middle of the night.

He’d only gotten up to get a drink. Then he’d wandered outside, unable to get back to sleep, perusing the singed garden outside Ino’s house. Then, the sky lit up.

The sound was enough to shatter your eardrums, and looking up to see the ripple of space overhead, the startled, animalistic screech of an animal downed, the sharp, air-slicing sound of a net through the air, and the explosion of sound and light, bright enough that it could rival the sun.

Naruto’s heard all the stories about the Night Fury’s terror. Scales as black as the deepest ocean trench, a midnight sky devoid of light, eyes like supernovas. Black, bat-like wings made with long, thin bones, long, curved claws made to gut the villagers. It always smelled like ozone before one was going to arrive, like the hot coals of a wildfire on the wind, like wet petrichor after morning rain. A belly filled with storm clouds, a maw lined with lightning, its roar tumbling thunder. Twice the size of the average person, easy enough to swallow someone alive. 

And, most of all: fast. 

The thing hurtles across the sky like a burning comet, and Naruto follows its movement with wide eyes until it disappears on the other side of the wall, lost among the jagged treeline. 

He breaks into a sprint before he can think better of it-

Because that _has_ to be a Night Fury, doesn’t it? He can taste the hot tang of copper at the back of his throat. There’s static on the back of his neck, at his fingertips, and that bright flash of lightning- nothing else moved that fast.

And if he _were_ to find a Night Fury, then there was his ticket to social acceptance, wasn’t it? His key to becoming a Jinchuuriki, the key to his parent’s legacy and a life of luxury.

He sprints, running through the gates and into the forest. There was no way that anything from that high up could have an easy impact, not even a dragon, with its midnight wings tangled underneath the mesh wire.

He turns towards the smoking leaves, a deep crater of destruction and recently-turned earth, displaced from the impact.

He peers into the shrubbery before he sees something huddled on the ground.

_A dragon._

Smaller than he expected, as black as real obsidian. No long lines of spikes and claws the size of his torso, but its wings, big and black like towering storm clouds, were exactly as described. Its face is turned into the dirt, eyes screwed shut. He edges closer; he can’t tell whether or not it’s alive.

In that moment, he becomes intimately aware that the only weapon he has on him is the dagger strapped to his thigh, and he’s approaching the most dangerous creature known to mankind on nothing more than a whim. 

He slides down into the crater, the electric tingling of anticipation and icy fear playing on the exposed endings of his nerves. He leans down on his haunches. The creature is caught in the net, digging into its tough hide with enough force to draw blood. 

And then it opens an eye. 

He flinches back so hard he stumbles, catching himself on a thornbush. 

The dragon just watches him, not with the red, bloodthirsty eyes the dragon Madara was described with, but wide, curious eyes of dark gray, almost black. Full of wariness, hesitation, fear. He’s startled by how human it looks.

How could someone kill one of these? 

It’s not as if he really wanted to kill one before, not like he had some vendetta, but he had wanted to gain some social status. But - but it’s _looking_ at him, and Nauto has always had a soft spot for animals, and it’s actually - it’s kind of _cute._

“I’m gonna cut you out.” He says, and glances over his shoulder. Do they still execute traitors? Because he’s pretty sure that this must be high treason. He doesn’t hesitate, though. “I’m just gonna cut the wire, okay? So don’t freak out.” He laughs, nervous. “Don’t tell anyone about this, or we’re both dead.”

It looks at him with strange eyes, and huffs, relaxing into the ground.

Naruto cuts the last of the wire-string from its shoulders and watches it shake itself free, much bigger than it had looked curled up on the ground but still nowhere near the monstrous size he was expecting. 

It stares at him for a moment, and Naruto is absolutely sure he’s about to die, that the Night Fury will revert to its true nature and recognize him for the prey that he is, but it doesn’t. It bumps his forehead with its nose, turns, and ducks back into the shrubbery with much more grace than a creature of its size should have.

He stares, dumbfounded

_What just happened?_

**Author's Note:**

> I looked up dragon classes for this


End file.
